trine of the Talmudists, that
repentance and ritual sacrifice expiate some sins, death the rest.
Death wipes off all unexpiated sins."13 Tholuck says, "It was a
Jewish opinion that the death of the just atoned for the
people."14 He quotes from the Talmud an explicit assertion to that
effect, and refers to several learned authorities for further
citations and confirmations.

Secondly, the apostles conceived Christ to be sinless, and
consequently not on his own account exposed to death and subject
to Hades. If, then, death was an atonement for sins, and he was
sinless, his voluntary death was expiatory for the sins of the
world; not in an arbitrary and unheard of way, according to the
Calvinistic scheme, but in the common way, according to a
Pharisaic notion. And thirdly, it was partly a Jewish expectation
concerning the Messiah that he would,15 and partly an apostolic
conviction concerning Christ that he did, break the bolts of the
old Hadean prison and open the way for human ascent to heaven. As
Jerome says, "Before Christ Abraham was in hell, after Christ the
crucified thief was in paradise;"16 for "until the advent of
Christ all alike went down into the under world, heaven being shut
until Christ threw aside the flaming sword that turned every
way."17

These three thoughts that death is the expiatory penalty of sin,
that Christ was himself sinless, that he died as God's envoy to
release the prisoners of gloom and be their pioneer to bliss leave
nothing to be desired in explaining the sacrificial terms and
kindred phrases employed by the apostles in reference to his
mission.

Without question, Peter, like his companions, looked for the
speedy return of Christ from heaven to judge all, and to save the
worthy. Indications of this belief are numerously afforded in his
words. "The end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore sober
and watch unto prayer." "You shall give account to him that is
ready to judge the quick and the dead." Here the common idea of
that time namely, that the resurrection of the captives of the

12 Witsius, Dissertatio de Seculo hoc et futuro, sect. 8.

13 Lightfoot on Matt. xii. 32.

14 Comm. on John i. 29.

15 "God shall liberate the Israelites from the under world."
Bertholdt's Christologia Judaorum, sect. xxxiv., (De descensu
Messia ad Inferos,) note 2. "The captives shall ascend from the
under world, Shechinah at their head." Schoettgen de Messia, lib.
vi. cap. 5, sect. 1.

16 See